Statement of Values for Equity and Social Justice

Bike East Bay believes transportation justice is an essential part of our work as bicycle advocates. In order to fulfill our mission and build a more just and equitable transportation system, we must take into account our society’s systematic inequalities, including those based on race, class, gender, ability, and geography. We, as staff and board of Bike East Bay, commit to the following values and principles to guide our work.

Transportation Justice

Bike East Bay works to prevent and redress racial and class bias in transportation planning, policies, and enforcement. Systemic racism and class bias has caused disinvestment, exclusionary zoning, and neighborhood fragmentation in our cities. As a result, people of color, lower-income people, and immigrants are more likely to suffer health disparities due to pollution and inactivity, and are more likely to be victims of traffic violence.

We work to ensure transportation planning and policies are developed, applied, and implemented to counter and redress the effects of systemic and institutional racism.

We prioritize improving safety and access to bicycling for people of color, lower-income people, and immigrants to improve the health outcomes of these communities.

We recognize people of color are more likely to be stopped by police for bicycle and pedestrian infractions and we will call on local police departments to disavow racially biased traffic enforcement.

We strongly believe that displacement is a transportation issue and we work to keep communities in place.

Leadership from the Community

Bike East Bay works to ensure that people who are most affected by street and policy changes are engaged and visibly leading during the decision-making process.

We seek out, listen to and trust local knowledge to guide our work.

We train and empower staff, members, volunteers and community members to step up as leaders.

We build strong, positive, collaborative relationships with each other as staff and board, members, volunteers, community partners, and decision-makers.

We get to know people as individuals and each community as a unique community.

We commit to growing the capacity of less well resourced partner organizations, especially those led by people of color, to engage in the transportation planning process.

Strength in Diversity

Bike East Bay works to build an environment where people of all races, ethnicities, incomes, ages, religions, sexual orientations, gender identities, abilities, and countries of origin feel welcomed, seen, celebrated, and treated equitably.

We promote diversity and inclusiveness in our Board of Directors, staff, members, and volunteers.

We create environments that allow for voices that are less-often heard to be heard and participate in the decision-making process. We may ask more dominant voices, including our own, to step back and do more listening.

We are thoughtful of everyone’s needs when coordinating activities by seeking to provide meals, childcare, and easy-to-access locations.

We respect that people of color and other groups with shared identities need their own space to meet from time to time, away from others who may not share the same cultural practices, experiences and challenges.

We appreciate that the people and organizations we work with have different values and priorities than our own. We will actively seek open dialogues to figure out our shared values and priorities, and we are willing to change course as we learn more.